Having performed research for a number of years on the healing effects of both Western medicine and complementary therapies such as Tai Chi and meditation, I’m intrigued by the question of which factors actually contribute to improvements in health.

Do Western and complementary therapeutic modalities share any common healing factors? In our society we generally assume that Western therapies heal and complementary therapies, like meditation or acupuncture, do not. If some improvement comes after a complementary therapy, I’ve heard people say, “It’s just the placebo effect.” But what exactly is the placebo effect? And what is its relationship to all forms of healing, not only complementary therapies but Western medicine as well?

Artistic inspiration is something that most scientists—at least most neuroscientists—refuse even to consider in the laboratory. How can you measure what’s truly inspired and what isn’t? There is, however, a subjective experience that comes with inspiration, and this I’d had tastes of myself before I ever studied neuroscience. Though I grew up as a musician and loved music, one of the reasons I chose science as a career was that I didn’t feel I could reliably access true inspiration as an oboist..

Is it possible that there is a scientific basis for the mystical experiences people, including myself, often have in meditation? This is one of the key questions I address in my forthcoming book, Infinite Awareness: The Awakening of a Scientific Mind. The answer that most scientists would give is a resounding no, but in my book I take the reader with me through my own exploration of science and meditation.

Most neuroscientists say that you must have an active brain in order to have conscious experience, yet there is much research evidence that suggests otherwise. In the area of near-death experience (NDE) during cardiac arrest, I have seen compelling evidence to support the premise that human consciousness does not require a functioning brain. A sizable percentage of cardiac arrest patients report having these experiences even though their body—including, naturally, their brain—has been judged by medical professionals to be nonfunctioning, to be dead.